Genesis 12-21 (Sarah's True Joy)

The Shepherd's Church

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One of the reasons that modern worship lacks the kind of jaw -dropping power that it had in the

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Old Testament, and one of the reasons that worshipers today are not filled with the same kind of spine -tickling enjoyment that we see in the

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New Testament, is that as modern worshipers, we are often consumed with ourselves instead of God.

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We have become consumers, searching for a good experience instead of experience that's searching after a good and holy

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God. And I believe that that very fact is the reason why there's so much unhappiness in the church, so much depression, so much spiritual boredom, because we were made to be happy in God.

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We were made to have a never -ending joy and a satisfaction that will not end.

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Sadness is actually antithetical to Christianity, and there is no such thing as a joyless

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Christian. That's a contradiction in terms. There is no such thing as a joyless

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Christian. There's no such thing as a miserable, depressed, despondent, melancholy follower of Christ.

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The Bible does not even allow the category. Now, perhaps you're saying, what about me?

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I'm depressed right now. I'm sad right now. I'm filled with all kinds of different emotions that are all over the place, and I've been through so much this year that I don't even feel like I have a drop of joy left in my heart.

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What about me? And perhaps that is very true. Perhaps that is exactly where you're at right now.

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We live in a very interesting time where there doesn't seem to be a lot of joy in full supply.

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But I want us to notice something. There is a big difference between being a

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Christian who is struggling against a sin or a Christian who is struggling and fighting for joy and a

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Christian who is sitting down in their sin or sitting down in defeat. There's a big difference. Far too often we sit in our sin instead of battling.

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Far too often we say that we're struggling, but we don't even lift a finger of struggle. I hear

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Christians say almost colloquially, and I'm not talking about anyone here, just in general, all of us, that we're struggling with our sin.

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Better, what we should say is, I've given up in my sin. I've thrown up the white flag of defeat.

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I've stopped wrestling, bucking, fighting, scratching, clawing, and going to war with my sin.

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You see, what it means to struggle is to fight. What it means to struggle is to make war. It's to get the sword and the spear out and pierce a hole through our sin and give it a mortal wound.

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It takes energy and effort to see our sin killed. We can't say that we're struggling if we're not going to war.

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We can't say that we're fighting against our sin if we're not willing to pick up the holy axe and put it to death, as Romans 8 .13

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says. Until there's real fight in our life, until there's real war in our spiritual life, until there's sins that are laid dead on the battlefield, we've not struggled.

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Maybe we've play -acted, but we've not struggled. John Owen, the famous Puritan, once said it like this,

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Be killing sin, or sin will be killing you. That is where many

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Christians are, and that is how many Christians' lives have gone awry and have gone deep into depression because they're not killing sin.

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And because they're living in their sin, it's robbing them of their joy that they could have in Jesus Christ. Now, we get the point when it comes to the traditional bad sins, when we're talking about sodomy, cocaine, and adultery.

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We get we're supposed to put that stuff to death. We get that we're supposed to repent of those things.

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We get that those things are not supposed to be our identity. But what about sadness? How often have we aggressively fought against our sadness so that we would have joy in Christ?

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How often have we attacked ungodly despair? How often have we went with a holy axe after our doubt and our frustration, our anxiety, or depression?

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The Bible says that we're supposed to leave our old lives behind and live in the new life that Jesus Christ has given us.

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Did you know that he has given you a new heart? He's given you new affections.

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He's given you new hopes, new dreams, new emotions. He died to make us happy in God.

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He died to make us happy in God, joyful in the word, enthusiastic in our worship, spirited in the way that we love the saints, excited to go and gather with the saints on Sunday morning.

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He didn't die to make us sad. He didn't die to leave us discouraged, dejected, disquieted, or depressed.

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He died to make us the happiest creatures on earth, lights in a darkened world, so that when the world sees us, they're confused by how joyful we are.

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He intends for us to find our entire joy and satisfaction in him, and as we read earlier, he has storehouses forever so that he can't be exhausted.

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We can always have joy in every moment of our lives. We were made and we were remade for joy.

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Even think about the fruits of the Spirit. Love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, gentleness, goodness, self -control.

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There's not one on there that says depression. There's not one on there that says sadness. There's not one on there that says bad attitude or gloom.

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Those are sins just like addictions. Those are sins just like murder that we have to put to death at the cross of Christ.

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We were saved in order to laugh, sometimes until our ribs hurt.

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He saved us. That's funny. We were saved to love until our chest ached.

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We were saved to feel joy until our toes curl. All the sensations that we've been given have been made to be subject to the living

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God. Our joy is an apologetic to a sad and lost and depressed world on how good and how great our

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God is. But sadly, when we look just like the world, when we look just as bitter, when we look just as sad, when we look just as depressed, our lives are actually an apologetic in the opposite direction.

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Our lives speak to the fact that we don't believe that God has power to make us different. There's so many in the church that are more enamored with sin and idolatry.

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So many that look just as frustrated as the world because of toxic politics.

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So many that have been consumed with the culture wars and the media. So many who've been given over to despair and discouragement and depression.

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So many who, when they go to work, they look no different than anyone else because they say, gosh, I can't believe how bad this world is.

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How often do we go to work saying, I can't believe how good my God is, even in the midst of living in this country right now that is not great.

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But God is great. We have reason to be joyful and we have reason to be happy in Christ.

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Helmut Thieleke, I don't know how to pronounce his name. We'll call it Thieleke. It sounds even more prestigious.

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He said it this way. Should we not see that lines of laughter about the eyes are just as much marks of faith as are the lines of care and seriousness?

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Is laughter pagan? We have already allowed too much that is good to be lost to the church and cast our many pearls before swine.

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A church is in a bad way when it banishes laughter and joy from the sanctuary and leaves it to the cabaret, the nightclub, and the toastmaster.

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Joy is created by God. Laughter and happiness are his attributes.

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He is the one who's been joyful for eternity. He made us to shine as joyful lights in the world.

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So today I want us to look at how this came to bear on one particular woman's life.

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Her name is Sarah. She was Sarai when we meet her. I want us to examine her background in Genesis.

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I want us to examine her very cynical laughter that she has in the beginning. She laughs in a sinful way.

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But then I want us to see how when she sees who God is and when she sees what God has done, she has a new kind of laughter, a laughter that is godly, a laughter that will usher her heart into worship.

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And I want us to see how that, even that event, looks past her to the Christ who will bring joy to the nations.

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So with that, I want us to see how the incarnation of God will make his followers joyful.

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That is the heart for today. So let's pray and let's get into the word. Lord, you came 2 ,000 years ago for a purpose.

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And as good evangelical Christians, we know that purpose was to come and to seek and to save the lost.

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It was to come and die for the sins of your people. It was to come and do for us what we could not do for ourselves.

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But we often miss the implications of why you came. We've majored on the majors, but we have not understood even the secondary or the minor tones of the gospel, which are also very important.

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You didn't come to save us just for salvation itself. You didn't come to rescue us just so that we could remain in the same state that we were before you called us.

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You came to save us, to change us, to save us, to redeem us, to save us, to sanctify us, to save us, to fill our hearts with joy and laughter in Christ.

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Lord, I pray that we would resist the temptation to be joyless creatures when we serve a

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God who's done so much. Lord, I pray that we would resist the melancholy normalcy of life in a broken world and that we would allow our thoughts, our hearts, our minds, our emotions, every part about us to be lifted up to see who you are, how good you are, how good you've been.

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And Lord, I pray that the world would see Christians who are joyful. Lord, we pray those things in Christ's name.

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Amen. Amen. So when we come to a lady like Sarah, we come to a lady who we can empathize with a lot.

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And if there's anybody who could have a pass on joy, we can kind of look at Sarah and say, hmm,

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I can see why she was upset. I can see why she was bitter. Now, she doesn't get a pass, but if there's anybody that we could extend that grace to, maybe it would be her.

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She grew up, she lived, she moved and walked and had her being in a time where children were absolutely essential.

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The Bible still says that children are essential, children are a blessing. We don't act that way in today's society, but in their society, they got it, they valued it.

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They saw that children were essential to everything, and she had none. She was infertile.

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She had no children. Now, the reason children were essential were the reasons why she was so frustrated.

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You have first farming. The world was built upon agrarian sorts of society, so children were essential for working on the farms, especially the male children.

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Families would need to have good -sized plots of lands in order to accommodate their animals, to raise their crops, to ensure harvesting was completed on time.

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Without a large portion of children, they couldn't get the work done that was needed to be done on the farm, and as a result, the whole family would be vulnerable.

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If you don't harvest the crops at a certain time, and you don't have refrigerators, and you don't have preservatives, you don't eat.

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So they needed children. Also, children were a symbol of wealth and status in the ancient world.

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The more children you had, the more land that you could manage. The more land that you could manage, the more animals that you could have.

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The more animals that you had, the more wealth you were considered to have when you went to the marketplace. There's no...

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It's not a coincidence that kings had the most cattle in the ancient world because it's a symbol of wealth, power, authority, rule, and status.

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Children are heritage from the Lord because they lift the fortunes of the family entirely.

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But even more so, in the ancient world, children were considered a blessing from God. Now, Abraham and Sarah grew up in a pagan society, but they still had an idea that children were a blessing from the gods.

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They still believed that if you had many children, then you had favor from the gods and that they had opened up your womb and that they had given you these blessings.

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But if you didn't have children, it was sort of seen as a curse from the gods. The gods were angry with you.

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They didn't like you, so you had to do these increasingly difficult sacrifices in order to have children.

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And these demonic gods even required that you would sacrifice your children on the altar so that you could have more children.

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It's disgusting. Paul says that these gods were fueled by the power of demons, and we believe it.

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But the central idea at the time was that children were a blessing from God. Now, you can imagine how

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Sarah must have felt when she had no children. It wasn't like she just had a couple of children, you know, the 1 .5

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kids and the dog. That was socially taboo at the time. But she didn't have any children, which was a societal curse at the time, and she felt it.

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Every time she went to the grocery store, she saw their icy stairs on the back of her neck. Every time she went out in public, she realized she's the old lady who doesn't have any kids, and everyone thinks that she is the problem.

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Everyone thinks that she and her husband are the one who've sinned. We see that her and Abraham are living in a wealthy town called

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Ur of the Chaldeans. It's likely archaeologists tell us that Ur was probably one of the first places in the

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Fertile Crescent region that had running water. It was a cosmopolitan city at the time, so it was a place where they could have had a family.

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It was a place where they could have raised children in a home, but she didn't have children. We learn from the book of Joshua that Abraham was an idolater before the

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Lord called him. So here we have Abraham and Sarai living in a pagan town, worshiping pagan gods.

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They have no children. They're probably seen as the curse of the town in some ways, and this is the situation that they were in when

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God called them in Genesis 12. And when God called them, it changed everything about them.

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God calls Abraham in Genesis 12 to leave his home, to go to the land that he would show him, and that he would bless him, that he would multiply him, that he would give him children.

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God is speaking down into the deepest need of this family because they have nothing. They have wealth.

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They have all that kind of stuff, but they don't have what they really desire, and that's children, progeny, heritage, a lineage.

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Now you can imagine Sarai also struggling in this moment when

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God calls Abram, because when God calls Abram, he's calling Sarai. When God calls Abram, he's calling them to leave their home, the home that she's lived in for 66 years.

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She's 66 years old when you get to Genesis 12. She's lived in this community her entire life.

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She's got friends and family. She's got deep roots in the community. She's got women that she went to the pagan temples and worshiped alongside of who were like,

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I've never heard of this Yahweh. Why are you going to him? We have plenty of gods right here. And she's like, I don't know. My husband had this dream and this vision, and then the lady's like, she had to leave her cosmopolitan city and lifestyle.

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You think about the fact when we go on a nice vacation, say we go to a resort hotel and we have all of the trappings and we have the pool that you can swim up to the bar and you have all of these different varieties of things and you don't want to go home.

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You don't want to leave. She lived in that cosmopolitan sort of city and now she's being moved to the desert to follow a

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God she doesn't know. She's just heard his name. But one of the interesting things about Sarai and Abraham is they had massive faith.

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We don't see her complain here. We see her trust. We see her follow. We see her not say a word and say,

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I'll go. And the two of them went together. Let's read in Genesis 12, one through five at what happened to them.

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Now, the Lord said to Abraham, go forth from your country and from your relatives and from your father's house to the land, which

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I will show you. And I will make you a great nation and I will bless you and make your name great and you shall be a blessing and I will bless those who bless you.

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Anyone who curses you, I will curse. And in you, all of the families of the earth will be blessed.

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So Abraham went forth as the Lord had spoken to him and Lot went with him.

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Now, Abraham was 75 years old when he departed from Haran. Abram took

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Sarai, his wife, and Lot, his nephew and all their possessions, which they had accumulated and the persons which they had acquired in Haran and they set out for the land of Canaan.

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Sarai is following her husband here and she is leaving with big promises from God. At 66 years old,

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God is making pretty elaborate promises that he's going to bypass nature and give her a child.

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He's going to make them into a great nation, which is funny because it's just those two

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Great nations are more than just two people. So God's going to have to do a miracle.

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He's going to give them a great land. The word great in the Old Testament often means multiplied. When we think of great, we think good or really good.

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Great in the Hebrew sense means multiplied. He's going to give them a land with multiplied blessings. He's going to make them a nation that multiplies across the face of the earth.

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He's going to give them great blessings, not just really special blessings, but multiplied blessings, blessings that never end.

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He's going to give them a great name, a name that never ends, a name with renown in the region, a name of power, like you would think of a

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Windsor, which is, I found out that that's Queen Elizabeth's last name. I had no idea.

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I'm from America. But he's going to give them a great name. He's going to give them a great family, a family that multiplies, a family that spreads out, a family that has tremendous blessing.

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And all the while, 75 -year -old Abram and 66 -year -old Sarai are like, okay, we'll believe you.

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These were not small promises, but they were willing to believe. And they set out and they went and they did. And in the

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New Testament, it says that God counted this as righteousness for Abraham that he believed.

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Sarai, the same way, says that she's a woman of faith because she believed that even though she had long been past menopause, she was going to see

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God do something. Now, as soon as they get to the land of Israel, this is often what

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God does. He'll make a very big promise and then he'll pull back and he'll stop speaking for a while.

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He'll go silent. As soon as they get to the land, God stops speaking for a decade. As soon as they get there, a famine hits.

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And you can imagine Sarah saying, we didn't have food shortages in Ur. We didn't have famines in Ur.

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We had plenty of food, plenty of everything. We didn't have to pack up our bags and leave and move to Egypt. She's not in doubt mode at this point, but you couldn't blame her for having questions.

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As soon as they got to Egypt, they had to pack up their bags and move to Egypt because of a famine. As soon as they got to Egypt, Abraham has a moment of extreme cowardice.

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And he says, my wife is so beautiful that they're going to kill me. So I'm going to give her to the Pharaoh. And she ends up in the home of Pharaoh and by God's grace alone,

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Pharaoh did not defile her. You can imagine Sarah saying, what is going on?

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I was in Ur. I had all of this stuff. I had a pretty good life. And now my husband loses his backbone and I end up in Pharaoh's house.

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She has to see Pharaoh himself rebuke her husband for how foolish he was, which is incredibly interesting.

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Abraham was the man who followed God to get there and now a pagan Pharaoh is having to rebuke him for his foolishness.

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You can empathize with this woman. You can almost, if you think about it, you can imagine that she would think it would be better off that Abraham died defending her honor than to sell her into the arms of another man.

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You gotta have some counseling after that moment. I don't know if I can trust you quite as much as I did before.

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But even in that, God was protecting her. Even though God was silent and God wasn't speaking directly to them, he was protecting her.

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He sent plagues upon the house of Pharaoh. Interesting, right? Famine takes them down to Egypt.

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God sends plagues to protect his people. Sounds a lot like the book of Exodus, right? God is having

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Abraham and Sarah act out the drama of what's gonna happen to his people.

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All of this happened to them in Genesis 12. Genesis 13, Abram and Lot split up because the land's not big enough, so more change is happening in her life.

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Genesis 14, Abraham apparently finds his backbone and gets involved in a city -state war in the region.

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Lot is captured. He's a POW soldier in a little city -state battle. And Abram gets his house, his servants, everyone that's in his home, and he goes to war with these four city -state nations, and he wins.

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Sarah's probably freaking out because she's like, if he dies, I'm gonna be destitute.

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What is my 80 -something -year -old husband gallivanting around like a young lad at war when he should be at home with his walker and his cane?

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What is he doing? They had a lot of wealth at this time in this 10 years where God was silent.

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Their assets were beginning to grow. Their livestock was beginning to become multiplied, but they still had no children, the thing that God had promised them.

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Genesis 15, Abraham's starting to get a little discouraged. It's been 10 years. God shows up.

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God takes Abraham out into the field, and he puts him to sleep for a moment. When Abram wakes up, he sees the drama of redemption happening in front of his very eyes.

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He sees God passing between the split animal pieces on the ground, which is covenantal terms to say that God is making a promise that you will have a son or I will be ripped apart just like these animals that are laying on the ground.

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That's covenantally what God was doing. Abraham saw that. Abraham went home encouraged that day, but Sarah didn't see that.

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Sarah hadn't heard that. Sarah's trusting in the retelling of this from a man who sold her into the arms of Pharaoh.

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She believes it, but it's different when you see it with your own eyes.

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Genesis 16 has Sarah a little discouraged and frustrated. She comes up with a plan that ends up causing so much damage in their family.

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She says, I'm 75, 76, 77 years old.

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Maybe I misunderstood God's promises. Have you ever done that before? Where you read the

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Bible and you say, this is what God has said about me, and then later you're like, maybe that's not what that meant, and you try to spin it in a different way.

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Well, she spun it in a really bad way this time. She said, I'm going to have a child, but it's not going to be through my womb.

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So she convinces her husband to sleep with her maid, and she conceives.

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She bears a son, but it's not the son that God had promised. She took matters into her own hands, and the whole family suffered because of that moment.

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You can imagine the emotions that she was feeling. She was jealous. She was upset. She probably struggled with control after that, ashamed, annoyance.

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There were times where she blamed Abraham, and there were times where she blamed herself for what had happened.

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She was bitter. That promise that was made long ago now seemed like a distant memory to Sarah.

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Genesis 17 sees her at 90 years old, 24 years after the promise was given.

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We live in the microwave generation where we can't wait two minutes and 40 seconds, let alone 24 years.

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Abraham is encouraged again by God. God appears to him a third time. If you're counting, that's one every eight years,

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Abraham. That makes him a giant of the faith. If he was only encouraged once every eight years to believe in a promise that was two decades old, then he had extreme and massive faith, but Sarah hadn't heard anything from the

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Lord personally for 24 years. And you can imagine that she's starting to lose hope.

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The text continues this way in Genesis 17. Now, when Abraham was 99 years old, the

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Lord appeared to Abram and said to him, I am God Almighty. Walk before me and be blameless, and I will establish my covenant between me and you, and I will multiply you exceedingly.

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And Abraham fell on his face, and God talked with him saying, as for me, behold, my covenant is with you, and you will be the father of a multitude of nations.

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No longer shall your name be called Abram, but your name shall be called Abraham, for I've made you the father of a multitude of nations.

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The text continues down in verse 15. Then God said to Abraham, as for Sarah, your wife, you shall not call her name

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Sarai, but Sarah shall be her name. I will bless her, and indeed,

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I will give you a son by her. Then I will bless her, and she shall be the mother of nations.

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Kings of people will come from her. Then Abraham fell on his face and laughed, and he said in his heart, will a child be born to a man 100 years old, and will

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Sarah, who is 90 years old, bear a child? Now, what's fascinating about this is God doesn't rebuke Abraham for laughing.

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And we know that that's important because he does rebuke Sarah for laughing. And we get from this that Abraham was laughing out of worship.

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He was laughing out of the irony of the situation. He was saying, he was laughing, imagining a 99 -year -old man bouncing a brand new baby boy on his lap, and he was laughing because he believed that it was true.

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And the picture of that in his mind was causing him to be tickled silly. But to Sarah, these promises may have sounded like a joke, may have sounded far off and distant.

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How am I gonna be the mother of many nations? How am I gonna have kings come from me? Abraham is laughing, belly laughing, falling down on his face and laughing in a worshipful, godly way.

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Sarah is laughing for different reasons. And we see that in the next chapter. Abraham is visited by three visitors.

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This is when things get really serious. One of those visitors is Christ in the flesh. As you read it and as you see

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Abraham worshiping this man, you'll notice that this is Christ. This is what scholars call a

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Christophany. It's a pre -New Testament appearance of Jesus. And these happen several times in the

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Old Testament. Probably the easiest one to discern is in the fiery furnace. Three men walk in, but yet there's a fourth.

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And Nebuchadnezzar cries out and says, one like the Son of God, how close and how right he actually was.

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So these three visitors come to Abraham to talk to him. Two of them are gonna leave and they're going to go destroy

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Sodom and Gomorrah, but that's not the purpose for this meeting at this time. It says in Genesis 18, 9 through 15, then they said to him, where is

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Sarah your wife? And he said, there in the tent. He, the Lord said,

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I will surely return to you at this time next year. And behold,

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Sarah, your wife will have a son. And Sarah was listening at the tent door, which was behind him.

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Now, Abraham and Sarah were old, advanced in age. I really appreciate that Moses told us that. He's just reiterating, they were old.

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That's the way we're supposed to read it, I think. Now, Sarah was old. Sarah was past childbearing.

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Sarah laughed to herself saying, I have become old. Shall I have pleasure?

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My Lord being old also? And the Lord said to Abraham, why did

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Sarah laugh? Saying, shall I indeed bear a child when I'm so old? Is anything too difficult for the

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Lord? At the appointed time, I will return to you at this time next year and Sarah will have a son.

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And it says, Sarah denied it, however, saying, I did not laugh, for she was afraid. And Christ said to her, no, you did laugh.

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Sarah laughed in a different way than Abraham. She laughed in a sinful way. She laughed in a way that exposed her doubts.

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She was 90 years old at this point, long past the period of having a child. She was in the waning years of her life and her husband was one foot in the nursing home.

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So in many ways, we can kind of relate why she was doubting, why her laughter was present, and yet the

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Lord doesn't approve her for this. He reproves her for this.

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You see, laughter is a window into our soul. It tells us what we value. It tells us what kind of a people we are.

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Laughter says a lot about us. What we laugh about says who we are as people.

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For instance, if we find the raunchy humor from late night comedians funny, then it says a lot about our morality.

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If we find sitcoms where characters are shacking up with each other and sleeping around and everyone's laughing about it, then we're actually laughing about the very things that God himself detests and hates, and it showcases who we are.

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When we laugh, it is a litmus test for how healthy we are as a Christian. Abraham is the example of godly laughing.

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He believed God, and he found it so beautiful that he couldn't help but fall on his face and laugh at the possibilities, whereas Sarah was the example of ungodly laughing.

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She started from a place of doubt. How can this be? This isn't possible. She laughed in her doubts, and then she lied about it.

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The question I think that we need to wrestle with is what kinds of things do we find funny?

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We live in an entertainment -driven culture. All of us have watched comedies where we laughed, and if we're honest with ourselves, the things we're laughing at really aren't funny to God.

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The things that we think are so funny are listed as abominations and sins in the

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Bible, and our laughing at them is exactly where Satan wants us to be because now we've been desynthesized to the truth, and we've now accepted as error the things which

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God hates. Many of us in this room have laughed like Sarah in our doubts.

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We've laughed at situations which are painful and hurtful because we don't believe that God has power to save us or help us or come to our aid.

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Many of us have laughed like that. I want us to be people who laugh like Abraham, who find joy in laughter, who worship

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God in our laughter, who find purity and holiness in our laughter, who trust

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God and His provision in our laughter, enjoyment of God in our laughter.

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These are important things for us as God's people to consider, but I want us to notice that Sarah considered them as well.

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She laughs twice in the text. The first time is pretty bad, but she laughs a second time, and that's what

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I want us to focus on. When she realized that she was pregnant at 90 years old, I think she probably had to laugh.

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The first thing she thought maybe was, maybe this is indigestion. A couple months later, there's no doubt that it's a foot trying to kick its way out of her.

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You think about how this must have been incredibly difficult for her. My wife, when she was 30, was having back pains when she was pregnant.

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Can you imagine being 90 years old and being pregnant? And your muscles don't even work the same way.

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When I would get up to go to the bathroom, the baby would fall out. She was old, says in Genesis 21.

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Then the Lord took note of Sarah, and he said, And the Lord did for Sarah as he had promised.

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So Sarah conceived and bore a son to Abraham in his old age, at the appointed time of which

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God had spoken to him. Abraham called the name of his son who was born to him whom Sarah bore to him,

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Isaac. And Abraham circumcised his son Isaac when he was eight days old, as God had commanded him.

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Now Abraham was 100 years old when his son Isaac was born to him.

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It made Sarah 75, or sorry, 91. Sarah said,

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God has made laughter for me. Everyone who hears will laugh with me.

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And she said, Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse children, yet I have borne him a son in his old age?

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Do you see the difference in her laughter? The first time she's laughing, God can't do this.

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This is funny. Why would God even tell me? Is this some sort of joke? And she's laughing cynically. This time she's laughing with joy.

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She's like, who would have told me that in my old age, I would have a son? Who would have told me that at 90 years old,

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I would nurse an infant child? She's laughing in this moment. She's worshipping God through her laughter.

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Here you have the Guinness record for the oldest woman who had a baby, and it's funny. Because God does things not in the ways that we do things.

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His ways are not our ways. His thoughts are not our thoughts. And he deserves glory for his creativity.

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God, I would even go as far as to say, intertwines faith and humor inextricably at times, because he wants us to experience the entire gamut of our human emotions aimed at him.

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He made laughter. He made joy. And he wants us to use it for him. Worship is not always meant to be this dour and sad sort of serious endeavor.

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You know, like I love my Presbyterian brothers. And sometimes you go to the worship service, and it feels very robotic.

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I love them, and I love their seriousness. But it's okay if we have joy in our worship.

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It's okay if we're excited about who God is, seeing how awesome he is in his power, seeing how creative he is in his storytelling.

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No one would have made it like this. We are supposed to find joy in the awe of his majesty to be thankful for his goodness.

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And sometimes we are supposed to laugh because we're so overwhelmed with joy. You think to yourself, like think about your own life.

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How could God save someone like me? You can process through that thought a couple different ways.

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You can process that with sadness, knowing how sinful and wretched you are, and you can feel discouraged, and you can feel like you don't have any hope.

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How could God save me? The rhetorical answer to your question is, I don't believe that he can. You can also process that with gladness, knowing how good

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God is. You can say, how could God save me? You can also say that with laughing, knowing how humorous it is that God would save you.

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Out of all the people on earth, he chose you. It really is a funny statement when he says,

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I chose the foolish things of this world. We are the foolish things of this world. You think about who you married.

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I find God's humor in my marriage all the time. My wife has noise sensitivities, and I make a lot of noise.

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That's funny. I crack bones. I chew ice. I love chewing ice. It is annoying, but I love it.

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It's therapeutic as I just chomp on that beautiful frozen crystals. The whole time, she's almost on edge.

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That's funny. I'm who God picked for her. Apparently, she didn't know what was good for her, and God did.

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That's funny. I think we have to learn how to worship through laughter.

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I think we need to learn a new facet to our worship, which is being happy and joyful and pleased with our

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God. Sarah learned that in the sort of beautiful crowning moment of her life where God came through in a moment which seemed utterly ridiculous to the world.

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She learned to stop laughing in her doubts and to start laughing in a way that honored God. Today, I want us to see that humor can be sanctified, that maybe some of us need our sense of humor retooled a little bit according to the

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Father's will. Some of us have been laughing at the wrong things. As C .S. Lewis said, like children who make mud pies in the slums, when we have been promised a holiday at the sea, we are far too easily pleased.

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Maybe we've been far too easily pleased with the things that the world is peddling instead of the infinite, holy, beautiful, perfect, radiant God.

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Maybe God wants us to learn how to laugh like Abraham and Sarah, overjoyed by His goodness, awestruck by His kindness, and our mouths filled with either small, joyful chuckles or rib -tickling hoots of gladness.

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Both are acceptable. Abraham fell on his face and laughed. We have permission to have joy.

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Everyone here, I want you to understand that you have permission to be happy in God. You have permission to find

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God exciting. You have permission to have the kind of joy that stirs up your emotions, where you find

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God exhilarating, even in dark times. In dark times, He should shine brighter.

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I want us to stop thinking about the Bible, church, and Christianity as white -knuckling, joyless religion.

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And I want us to start seeing everything in this book, everything about Christ, everything about God as a conduit for unsurpassable and insurmountable joy.

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If we're connected to Jesus, we are connected to streams of living water and storehouses of joy that will never end.

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This is what we learn about in this passage from Sarah, but it doesn't stop with Sarah because it points past Sarah.

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You see, Sarah, while she's holding Isaac with all the joy that she had in her heart, that joy didn't last.

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Isaac grew up. He sold his wife into the arms of Abimelech, just like his dad.

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That wasn't very joyful. His sons wanted to kill each other, even from the moment that they came out of the womb and didn't bring a lot of joy to the earth.

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This little fledgling nation, Israel, that came from Sarah, ended up bringing a lot of destruction and idolatry and not a lot of joy to the earth.

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There were some bright spots in their history, like when David brought the ark back into Jerusalem and he danced in the presence of God.

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That was a bright spot. Or when Solomon offered sacrifices to God and dedicated a temple.

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That was a bright spot. Or when Hezekiah defended the city of Jerusalem successfully against the superpower of their day,

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Assyria. That was a bright spot. But I wouldn't use gladness and joy as characterizing terms for the

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Old Testament. The Old Testament is dark. The Old Testament is gloomy. The Old Testament is marred in sin and it has a tone of sadness, almost like when you play an instrument and you play a minor chord.

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That's the Old Testament. But the Old Testament foreshadows the joy that Christ is gonna bring.

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Sarah's little son, Isaac, bouncing on Abraham's lap, signals that not Isaac, but her future descendant,

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Jesus, is gonna be the one who's gonna bring joy to the nations. I wanna just do a quick flyover real quick of just a couple of passages.

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This is what it says in Isaiah 51, 1 -3. Listen to me, you who pursue righteousness, who seek the

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Lord. Look to the rock from which you were hewn and to the quarry from which you were dug. Look to Abraham your father and to Sarah who gave birth to you in pain.

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When he was but one, that's Isaac, I called him. Then I blessed him and multiplied him. Indeed, the

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Lord will comfort Zion. He will comfort all her waste places and her wilderness.

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And He will make it like Eden and her desert like the garden of the Lord. Joy and gladness will be found in her.

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Thanksgiving and a sound of melody. When Jesus Christ comes, He is saying that joy is gonna break out upon the face of the earth.

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He's saying there's gonna be no more dullness and no more sadness because Sarah's children are gonna laugh and they're gonna have joy because of the

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Christ. The purpose of Jesus' incarnation is the dawning of indestructible joy.

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There's no such thing as a joyless Christian, like I've said before. There's no such thing as an embittered and depressed follower of Christ because Christ came to bring us joy.

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To give true happiness in Him. Christians are made to be the happiest people on earth so that the world can look at us and be in awe of who

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God is. Look at Isaiah 51, 11. A critical part of believing in who He is is being satisfied by Him.

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It says that so the ransom to the Lord will return and come with joyful shouting to Zion.

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Everlasting joy will be on their heads. They will obtain gladness and joy and sorrow and sighing will flee away.

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When Jesus is born, shouting is gonna break out on the face of the earth. Enthusiastic singing is gonna reverberate to the ends of the world.

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Sorrow and sadness are gonna run for the hills. An unjoyful Christian, given that declaration, is like a non -starting car or like a snow blower in Panama.

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It's a contradiction of terms. Look at what it says in Isaiah 52.

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How lovely on the mountains are the feet of Him who bring good news. Who announces peace and brings good news of happiness.

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Who announces salvation and says to Zion, Your God reigns. Listen, your watchmen lift up their voices and they shout joyfully together.

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For they will see with their own eyes when the Lord restores Zion. Break forth and shout joyfully together.

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You waste places of Jerusalem for the Lord has comforted His people. He has redeemed Jerusalem.

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Look at Jeremiah 31. They will come and shout for joy on the heights of Zion and they will be radiant over the bounty of the

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Lord. Over the grain and the new wine and the oil, bread and wine. And over the young of the flock of the herd and their life will be like a watered garden.

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They will never languish again. The son of Sarah is going to bring indestructible joy.

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He's going to multiply her joy. He's going to expand her joy and He's going to make her joy available to all of God's people forever.

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Ever. Look at what Isaiah 35 .10 says.

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And the ransom to the Lord will return and will come with joyful singing, shouting to Zion with everlasting joy upon their heads.

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And they will find gladness and joy and sorrow and sighing will flee away.

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He's going to restore joyful worship in His kingdom. Look at Zephaniah 3 .14 -17. Shout for joy,

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O daughter of Zion. Shout in triumph, O Israel. Rejoice and exult with all of your heart,

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O daughter of Jerusalem. The Lord has taken away His judgments against you. He has cleared away your enemies, the

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King of Israel. The Lord is in your midst. For you fear disaster no more.

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In that day it will be said of Jerusalem, Do not be afraid, O Zion. Do not let your hands fall limp.

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The Lord your God is in your midst, a victorious warrior. And He will exult over you with joy and He will quiet you in His love and He will rejoice over you with shouts of joy.

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God rejoices over His people with shouts of joy and we are to respond to Him with shouts of joy.

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We're commanded to be joyful. We are not commanded to be killjoys or blowhards.

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We are commanded to be happy in Christ. We are commanded as a congregation to raise our voices to the living

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God. And this is not legalism. We don't do this to make God happy. We do it because God's happy.

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Because God loves us. Because He cares for us. Out of all the people on earth, we have

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God's love and we can't be sad about it. We can't be depressed about it. We've got to sing and shout about it.

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Look at what Zechariah 2 .10 says. Sing for joy and be glad, O daughter of Zion, for I am coming and I will dwell in your midst, declares the

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Lord. Many nations will join themselves to the Lord on that day and will become My people.

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And then I will dwell in your midst and you will know that the Lord of hosts has sent Me. God is saying that He is going to make the nations glad.

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He's going to bring happiness and joy in Him to the nations.

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And it's not just an Old Testament expectation. When we read the Old Testament, we read some of what the prophets did.

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You know, Isaiah ran around naked for two years as a prophecy. Ezekiel built a city and tore it down as an act of judgment against the city.

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They were interesting characters. Elijah called down fire from heaven and he made fun of the pagan gods.

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So they're interesting people, but it's not just them. This joy amplifies when we get to the

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New Testament. And I'll just share a couple examples with you. His joy is going to be given to the shepherds.

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As soon as Jesus is born, His joy is going to be given to the shepherds. It says, And the angel of the Lord suddenly stood before them, and the glory of the

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Lord shone around them, and they were terribly frightened. They start off afraid. But the angel said to them,

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Do not be afraid, for behold, I bring you good news of multiplied joy, which will be for all the people.

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For today in the city of David there has been born to you a Savior, who is Christ the Lord. This will be a sign for you that you will find the baby wrapped in cloths and lying in a manger.

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And suddenly there appeared with the angels a multitude of heavenly hosts, praising God and saying,

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Glory to God in the highest and on earth peace among whom He is pleased. The shepherds were considered dirty.

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The shepherds were considered people who could not even worship in the temple. They raised the animals that other people would sacrifice.

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But because they were shepherds, they were considered perpetually unclean. And here they have great joy because they are counted among the people whom

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God is pleased with. They have happiness and joy because they saw Christ. And we see it in verse 20 of Luke chapter 2.

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The shepherds went back after they saw Jesus, and they didn't go back sad, and they didn't go back...

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What's another word? Depressed. They went back glorifying and praising God for all that they had heard and seen just as it had been told to them.

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He brought joy to the wise men. After hearing the king, they went their way in the star, which they had seen in the east before, until it came and stood over the place where the child was.

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And when they saw the star, they rejoiced exceedingly with great joy. He brought joy to Zechariah.

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But the angel said to him, Do not be afraid, Zechariah, for your petition has been heard.

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Your wife Elizabeth will bear a son, and you will give him the name John, and you will have joy and gladness as many will rejoice in his birth.

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He brought joy to John the Baptist. For behold, when the sound of the greeting reached my ears, the baby leaped in my womb for joy.

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He brought joy to Mary. Mary said, My soul exalts the Lord, and my spirit is rejoiced in God.

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My Savior, for He has had regard for the humble state of His bondslave. For behold, from this time on all generations,

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He will count me blessed. When He grew up, He brought joy to His disciples. Luke 10, 17.

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The 70 returned with joy. He brought joy in His death.

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John 16, 20. Truly I say to you that you will weep and lament, but the world will rejoice. You will grieve, but your grief will be turned into joy.

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He brought joy on the women who found Him at the tomb. They left the tomb quickly with fear and great joy.

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He brings joy on the angels in heaven when a sinner repents. It says, I tell you, in the same way there will be more joy in heaven for one sinner who repents.

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He brings joy on us, the sinner here on earth, when we come to know Him. It says, These things have

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I spoken to you so that my joy may be in you and that my joy or your joy will be made full.

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John 17, 13. But now I come to you and these things I speak to you so that my joy may be full in themselves.

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Blessed are you who hunger now, for you will be satisfied. Blessed are you who weep now, for you shall laugh.

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Revelation 21, 1 through 4. The world ends in joy. Then I saw a new heaven and a new earth, for the first heaven and the first earth had passed away and there was no longer any sea.

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And I saw a holy city, a new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, made ready as a bride adorned for her husband, a joyful bride.

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And I heard a loud voice from the throne of God saying, Behold, the tabernacle of God is among men and I will dwell among my people and they shall be

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His people and God Himself will be their God and He will banish anything except joy.

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He will wipe away every tear from their eyes and there will no longer be any death and there will no longer be any mourning or crying or pain.

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The first things have passed away so that all that is left is joy. God began the world in eternity in joy and He will end redemption in joy and He expects now for us like Jesus who for the joy set before Him to endure whatever cross that He has given us.

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There is no such thing as an unhappy Christian. It's a contradiction in terms. It is a sin worth repenting of.

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There is no such thing as the sanctified grouch in a church. There is no such thing as the one who just constantly is negative.

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We have everything in the world to be thankful for. We have nothing in the world to be sad about.

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Our God lives. The tomb was empty and You were a part of His chosen people. That is something worth rejoicing over.

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Amen? Let's pray. Lord God, I pray in this season when our country seems lost that,

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Lord, we would look like people who have been found. That we would smell like Your people. That we would look like Your people.

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That we would sound like Your people. That we would sing like Your people. And that, Lord, that the world would take notice.

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Lord, I pray that it would not be a false joy. A joy that we feel like we have to put on.

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A joy that we haven't really experienced but because of other people's joy we want to mimic that.

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Lord, I pray that it would be authentic. I pray that it would be Holy Spirit wrought. I pray that You would go deep down into our bones and You would cause us to see who

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You are. See who we are and rejoice like Abraham and Sarah. Lord, only